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Talk:P.A.N.Z.E.R./@comment-24142455-20161020014101/@comment-27404954-20161020165756
''-- Polish Border -- '' It appears as if the UAC aircraft would fall back before the CCCP assault, with a steady stream of Longswords falling down and missiles screaming towards Warhound helicopters. But Soviet pilots reeled in shock when they began seeing their own planes falling out of the sky – hit by the coilguns and lasers of the UAC helicopters, who were entirely unaffected by the USSR missiles and launching ones of their own. Artfully coordinated by the helicopters’ gunnery officers, the missiles spiraled in graceful loops, each place where they hit destroying yet another Soviet aircraft. The Soviet S-51s soon realized what was happening, and abandoned their missile launches -- which the helicopters easily dodged -- to try and shoot down the helicopters with railguns like the S-90s had begun doing. However, it was already too late; the Soviet fighters had launched more missiles at the attack helicopter formations than there were Soviet fighters, thereby emptying their payloads, and even with flares and extremely skilled pilots added into the equation, the sky was blossoming with unsustainable levels of USSR casualties. Taking advantage of this, the Longswords broke off their false retreat to re-engage under Rapier support, downing even more Soviet planes during the confusion and shock. The Warhound attack helicopters, their job done, retreated safely back to their carriers. And as for those ships, despite their higher numbers than any of the other individual fleets so far deployed, were taking heavy losses – thus far, the UAC fleet had already lost sixteen ships; two Revenant fleet carriers, ten Immobius battlecruisers – mostly from the initial firings of the Scarlet particle-cannon network --, and four Epitaph battleships. But nevertheless, the USSR was surprised by the ships they were engaging, for these were not normal UAC craft. Heavy MAC fire lanced out from underside mounts, splitting capital ships with each shot, and their commanders were far less dependent on formation and consistency than the Soviets were expecting. That, and not a single laser – which the CCCP was almost dependent on, except for Scarlet and along with Prometheus – could harm them due to an invisible plane of force nullifying every incoming blast, and the plasma missiles Scarlet was so fond of were sent spinning drunkenly into the ground or space. The lead ship, an enhanced Divine Punishment, was lost to the fire of the Mirs, but its sister ships retaliated, downing a full three Mirs with swarms of Archer missiles and MK-7B MAC rounds. A few of the Epitaph-class vessels making up the bulk of the fleet slewed around midair; the Requiem had been brought in far too close to ensure its safety, and it was sheared apart in a firestorm of cooking-off reactors and explosive decompression. The UAC ships began a fighting retreat to get out of the range of the Scarlet particle cannon network, quickly downing most of the PRK fleet with massed 2040 volleys as they were too spread out to absorb the damage with each other. The remaining MAC charges, on the other hand, went to fighting the Scarlet ships; a volley of half the MACs left in the fleet, along with a massive swarm of Archer missiles and 2040 rounds, tore through the heart of the Scarlet formation, and through the Hyperion’s Bow in the heart of it. The other half of the MACs went towards picking off the important ships around the edges of the main formation. … And those MACs were answered by more, from directly behind the Scarlet ships in orbit. Another UAC fleet, composed of one as-yet-unknown superheavy battleship, two Divine Punishments, fifteen Epitaphs, and ten Immobiuses, had exited cloak behind the Prometheus formation, and tore through the center of the comparatively-weak Prometheus formation from behind and under, a place they had not been expecting and where they had few guns. And this fleet, the true fleet, meant to annihilate the Soviet fleet response that would be doubtlessly provoked by the initial “bait” fleet, plunged down through the atmosphere and opened fire into the Scarlet formation, crushing it between the anvil of the retreating “bait” fleet and the hammer of the true anti-ship fleet. Taken by surprise, the Scarlet fleet loses far more ships than they were ever expecting, with the precision MAC fire of the UAC warships – instead of indiscriminate spray like what was expected of the UAC – targeting capital ships and capital ships only, splitting them apart at their structurally weakest points to fall to the ground over Russia, crushing their own defenses and men. And in among this whole milieu was a single UAC warship, the Gloriam Rex, dealing more damage than any enemy ship – at least, after the Hyperion’s Bow, which was currently crushing a small Polish city with its flaming bulk after being shorn apart by heavy MAC fire and its vulnerable core wracked by missile detonation after detonation. Almost casually, the Gloriam Rex turned its fire upon the remaining Mirs, wiping another two out of the sky and heavily damaging another. And now that it was among the enemy ships, the fleet activated its mounted x-ray synchrotron weaponry, collapsing any formation that the remaining few CCCP ships could muster as their engines cut out. And in-atmosphere, that was a death sentence. Small destroyers crashed in Poland and Russia, unable to restart their engines in time. And the larger capital ships only fell faster. Under the cover of this, the UAC forces opened fire with their MACs and missiles into the falling Soviet ships, ensuring that the few that hadn’t hit the ground were annihilated anyway. Before the Russians could muster any more craft, the UAC ships entered slipspace, their retreat complete. (OOC: Warp attack is dependent on warp bubbles; slipspace cannot be warp-attacked) Their job here was done; not only was two million-plus Soviet soldiers and heavy armor was annihilated before it could bloody so much as one gun, but their front into Poland was now near-impassable by nuclear fallout, wreckage, and craters. And the Soviet aerospace fleet that was mustered to deal with Caelum’s fleet was now scattered wreckage inside their own country and Poland, not only partially blocking the USSR from troop movements, but compromising Russian defenses along the border where they crashed – and everywhere else the ships were pulled from. Some had survived, their antigravity engines able to slow them enough to plow into the ground at less-than-terminal velocities, but even then, those would be largely incapacitated. The UAC had lost 33 ships and four ODPs to the combined USSR fleet’s 120-odd ships – including the Hyperion’s Bow and the three Goliaths --, two million trained troops with accompanying heavy armor and air support, and whatever penal battalions were unlucky enough to be mustered to the front to support the Russian troops’ advance. The Russians had furthermore had another hundred-odd ships crippled or incapacitated, while whatever UAC ships survived the battle were heavily damaged in some way, shape, or form -- with the exception of the Gloriam Rex. It was a victory for the UAC, yes. But time would tell if it was a telling victory for the future course of the war, or merely a fluke…